Movie Review: “Spring Breakers.”

In the opening credits of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, the title credits’ font are made from flickering neon shapes of vacation insignia: leaping Lisa Frank dolphins, beach balls, flip flops. They’re accompanied by the tranquil sounds of seagulls, laughter and lapping Gulf of Mexico waves. Watching it is like closing your eyes on a greasy lounge chair, covering your eyes with a towel as red and blue images flicker across your retina’s memory.

More than anything, these letters reminded me of the false promise of Fun, Fun, Fun promised me by St. Petersburg, Florida, my new adoptive hometown from the mid-90’s onward. We moved in July; I felt like I had woken up in hell.

So, it was easy to relate to the plight of Selena Gomez’s Faith, a teenager toggling between the Girls Gone Wild ethos of her childhood coterie and the “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” finger-guns shtick of Southern youth ministry. I say Southern because there’s a difference. The Spring Breaker’s audience cackled with laughter at the finger-guns cool-guy youth pastor’s ridiculous speeches to Faith’s group of true believers, but I felt like Korine held back on that front. Had he given us more background on this aspect of Faith’s life, it could have competed with the slow motion blood spattering that creates such a visceral reaction later on.

Faith only appears in the first two thirds of the film, too wholesome to realistically be drawn into the spiraling, demented ending, but she is Korine’s straw man. What happens when good girls go bad?

Faith’s friends: Candy (played by fellow Disney tv princess Vanessa Hudgens – Korine told Rolling Stone he got the idea to cast Gomez and Hudgens while watching Wizards of Waverly Place with his toddler daughter, Lefty), Brit (played by Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, Harmony’s wife) are already bad. They draw dicks in the middle of lectures, get high before class, and they fuck professors. They’re not much more debauched than the average bad-kid behavior taking place across college campuses right now.

But with the advent of spring break, they go from zero to sixty, stealing a professor’s car, robbing a family restaurant with a toy gun and a real sledgehammer, and setting the stolen vehicle on fire. With their newly acquired wealth, the quartet heads “to Florida,” presumably from a state school just above the panhandle. (The film was shot entirely on my college campus in Sarasota, Florida and on location in my aforementioned hometown). St. Petersburg holds the allure of release, boys, booze and better things. All of this is exemplified in the first scene, just a dreamy montage of bare breasts and unlimited alcohol set to Skrillex. I don’t think Korine was implying this is typical, but instead this is how we imagine “spring break,” even years after we’re past undergrad. I can tell you the oceanside keg stands and nudity are not real but the vomiting and arrests and general apocalyptic atmosphere is 100% accurate.

“This is paradise,” cry Faith and company, “I never want to go home.” And in that way vacation spots present reasons for you to never leave, the girls are arrested and then bailed out James Franco’s Alien, a mid-level dealer with a penchant for songwriting. The role might just be the best of his career.

If there was ever anyone living in the “moment,” it is Franco’s Alien, a man incapable of seeing past the next day’s haul. Like patients in an asylum given origami paper to focus their attention on a soothing task, Alien and his “employees,” the silent, gum-licking humanoids played by the just-as-terrifying-in-real-life ATL Twins, dismantle monogrammed bricks of marijuana into dime bags.

“Big booties, y’all,” cajoles Alien, alongside real-life St. Pete rapper Dangeruss, the basis of Franco’s character (at least, according to everyone except Riff Raff). “That’s what life is about!”

Under his wing, the girls slip deeper into the “spring break forever” mentality that can only be sustained by a conscious break with reality and a steady stream of increasingly violent activity. The hyper-saturated fantasy Korine weaves is decadent but trashy, like a strawberry swirl margarita made with Patron Silver. Dive in, the water’s fine. The semi-automatic weapons and blurred sexual boundaries are a small price to pay for a complete cinematic escape.

I have a feeling this film will go down in true cult film history, and not in the way Korine’s previous films have made a place in the collective consciousness. A viewer might not have seen all of Gummo, but they’re probably aware of the cat-drowning scene. Franco’s monologue about his untold riches as a self-made man, or the gratuitous, but humorous violence scored to Britney Spears’s breakup ballad “Everytime” will stay with you long after you’ve left the theater, the way a shoreline plays across the mind’s eyes long after you’ve shut your eyes.

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“Ratmansky’s extraordinary musical sense... wins out.”—Russia’s Kommersantwith the Kennedy Center Opera House OrchestraRomeo and Juliet“Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian—and the world-renowned company more than lives up to

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“Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian—and the world-renowned company more than lives up to its name with its latest production of Romeo and Juliet choreographed by former Artistic Director Alexei Ratmansky, one of today’s hottest, most visionary, and most in-demand dance-makers. The Bolshoi Ballet is celebrated for its daringly athletic and highly theatrical style of ballet. It’s been nearly six years since the mighty company last performed for us, and this time the Bolshoi’s incomparable stars immerse themselves in Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy of star-crossed love.

Danced to Prokofiev’s richly cinematic score, Ratmansky’s version shines with the characteristic style that audiences have come to adore from him: quick steps, vigorous lifts, and surprising dashes of humor. Leveraging the Bolshoi dancers’ dynamic range, his staging feels at once both epic and human, a sweeping spectacle that more deeply and poetically explores the young couple’s burning attraction to each other amidst the suffocating circumstances of family feuding in 14th-century Verona. When the Bolshoi tours in 2020, Washington is the only U.S. city lucky enough to host Romeo and Juliet. Don’t miss this remarkable opportunity!

Violent Femmes 10th studio album, HOTEL LAST RESORT, resides among the groundbreaking band’s finest work, simultaneously refining and redefining their one-of-a-kind take on American music, mingling front porch folk, post punk, spiritual jazz, country blues, avant garde minimalism and golden age rock ‘n’ roll into something still altogether their own. Founded and fronted of course by singer/guitarist Gordon Gano and acoustic bass guitarist Brian Ritchie, the Milwaukee-born combo remains as warm, wise and weird as ever before, with such new favorites as “Another Chorus” and “Everlasting You” continuing to mine the vast range of ideas, melodic complexity and organic sonic craftsmanship that has characterized the band’s body of work since their landmark self-titled 1983 debut.

Formed in 1977, X quickly established themselves as one of the best bands in the first wave of LA’s flourishing punk scene; becoming legendary leaders of a punk generation. Featuring vocalist Exene Cervenka, vocalist/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer DJ Bonebrake, their debut 45 was released on the seminal Dangerhouse label in 1978, followed by seven studio albums released from 1980-1993. Over the years, the band has released several critically acclaimed albums, topped the musical charts with regularity and performed their iconic hits on top television shows such as Letterman and American Bandstand. X’s first two studio albums, Los Angeles and Wild Gift are ranked by Rolling Stone among the top 500 greatest albums of all time. The band continues to tour with the original line-up fully intact. In 2017, the band celebrated their 40th yearanniversary in music with a Grammy Museum exhibit opening, a Proclamation from the City of Los Angeles and being honored at a Los Angeles Dodgers game where Exene threw out the first pitch and John Doe sang the National Anthem. In 2020, X celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Los Angeles.

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Today NYC-via-Seoul electronic producer, DJ, and vocalist Yaeji has announced the release of a new mixtape titled WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, due out April 2 on XL Recordings. To

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Today NYC-via-Seoul electronic producer, DJ, and vocalist Yaeji has announced the release of a new mixtape titled WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던, due out April 2 on XL Recordings. To introduce the new project, her first full-length mixtape and release on XL, Yaeji has shared a new animated music video for the lead single “WAKING UP DOWN.” It’s also been announced that this Summer Yaeji will perform live across North America and Europe in which she’ll debut an all-new live show featuring dancers, original choreography and new stage production.

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slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the

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slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the council estates of Northampton, and for it to advocate for community in a country increasingly mired in fear and insularity. Three years since the phrase first appeared in his breakout track ‘Jiggle’, Tyron Frampton presents his incendiary debut ‘Nothing Great About Britain’.

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Ed O’Brien never planned to make a solo record. As guitarist with Radiohead, who over almost three decades and nine albums have established themselves as one of the most innovative

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But suddenly a switch was flicked and the songs came pouring out of him. That creative surge resulted in an album of rediscovery and adventure by O’Brien under the moniker EOB that deftly veers from moments of delicate folk to euphoric house, its songs seamlessly pinned together by unswerving melodic hooks and candid lyricism.

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Join LabX and the Cultural Programs at The National Academy of Sciences as they collaborate with the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center to host a hands-on activity day for families with

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This album was made from January 2015 to December 2019, starting as a collection of vague ideas that eventually turned into songs. I wanted to make something that was different

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Growing up in suburban New Jersey, 23-year-old singer, songwriter and producer Jeremy Zucker has always been surrounded by music. In 2015, he released his first EP as a freshman at

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